This has been an interesting season to say the least. Above normal night time lows brought the vines into flowering quicker in June and we are seeing some decent fruit set in most varieties. The L'Acadie struggled and there was poorer fruit set in those, somewhat the same in the Evangeline so these were flowering when we were getting more rain and cooler weather which typically impacts the fruit set negatively. Castel and Leon Millot below,
The real story is in the fungal pressure we are experiencing this year. We are seeing tremendous fungal pressure on the Evangeline, which is more prone to mildew, but we are even seeing it sporadically in the Marechal Foch and Leon Millot which is highly unusual, especially this early in the season. IF... we see fungal pressure on these two varieties its usually in the late part of the growing season heading into harvest.
There has been unusual weather as well, lots of rain, some hail and big wind storms which resulted in a several vines being blown off the trellis in a high wind storm. What we could use now is a couple of really hot days, in the 37c-39c range as this type of heat is high enough to kill off a lot of the mildew.
